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Cloud: the future for your organization [Part 1 of 3]

Cloud computing is changing how companies do business, so how can you adapt? If your organization is struggling to make the most of the cloud, or hasn't adopted it yet, it's time to make the change for the good of the company and its people.

To help us understand the changing business dynamics and its impact on Canadian organizations, we have assembled a panel of experts.

Vijai Karthagesu, Co-founder of Cloud Dynamics, a leading Canadian Cloud Solutions provider and former Director of Technology at eHealth Ontario;

Andy Jordan, President of Roffensian Consulting Inc., a well-known author and expert on project management; and

Andrew Ford an IT industry veteran with Global Knowledge, will all share their viewpoints on how organizations and individuals must skill up as the market makes its move to the cloud.

Caitlin Nobes, HRM TV
Caitlin Nobes: Cloud computing is one of the most talked about business trends in the industry and Canadian organisations are gearing up for change. How can your company adapt?

Cloud’s Impact on Your People – Part 1/3

Caitlin Nobes: Vijai, as a pioneer of the Cloud Industry, what’s your perspective on what is driving organisations to adopt cloud computing solutions?

Vijai Karthigesu, Co-Founder, Cloud Dynamics Inc.
Vijai Karthigesu: There are lots of definitions about cloud. People define cloud in different ways and they always start with what is cloud and they try to define cloud. Let me start with what is cloud not. Cloud is not a technology, it is a business model. It’s the business model that enables organisations to be agile, efficient and effective. So the primary reason organisations move to cloud is agility, agility and speed. The market is moving very fast, so they have to deliver things fast. Time to market, time to production, time to reach customers, so agility and speed is the primary reason. The secondary reason is cost. People want to, organisations want to drive efficiency. So cloud presents an opportunity to drive efficiency. It enables organisations to deliver or consume cloud, consume IT efficiently and effectively.

Andy Jordan, President, Roffensian Consulting Inc.
Andy Jordan: Absolutely agree with that Vijai, I think that in today’s world no organisation can survive without technology. It’s core to everything that the business does. But very few organisations are actually technology-centric organisations. Technology exists to serve their purpose in life and the less time and effort and money that they have to invest into supporting technology, the more energy and effort and money they can invest in their core business in getting an advantage over their competition which is key in this competitive environment.

Vijai Karthigesu: Yeah.

Andrew Ford, IT Solutions Specialist, Global Knowledge
Andrew Ford: Very absolutely right. The changes, the technology with organisations have been there for quite a while. It’s the business model that’s changing, the way we are going to using it.
Caitlin Nobes: So what are the benefits for an organisation in embracing the cloud? Andy, let’s start with your advice.
Andy Jordan: Well I said that it allows organisations to focus on what they are good at, what their business is and that really allows them to leverage that into true business savings. If you’ve got more time, you’ve got more resources, you’ve got more money to invest in what it is that you exist to do, then you can deliver better return for your employees, better return for your shareholders, better return for your customers. Ultimately you are investing more of your effort into what it is that you exist to do which generates a better return on investment which has to be good for everybody. Andrew Ford: Yeah, I mean, you also have, as a business you have access to technology, you may not have had access to before because you don’t have to invest in the infrastructure to support it. So all of a sudden things are available to you that were not available to you in the past.

Vijai Karthigesu: Exactly, it’s democratisation of technology. Now you have access to large machines that only the large organisations had access before. So it’s an enabler. Cloud is an enabler for a business. So now it enables you to bring new avenues, new ways of doing business. The one more thing that cloud also presents an opportunity to organisations is IT itself as Andy said, it’s supposed to be an enabler, but in the legacy world unfortunately it became a bottomline. You know for example, how many of you hired some consultants or permanent employees and how long you had to wait for a computer, a phone set up or even if you want to get a developer to start developing, how long it takes to get a machine set up to development, you can’t do that in this world. So cloud actually presents an opportunity for businesses to transform that, to drive the efficiency, so it is an opportunity.

Caitlin Nobes: Andrew, what challenges does cloud computing present for organisations and their people?

Andrew Ford: Sure, now there is a big change. We are no longer getting our services directly from IT internally. And many times we are going to be going out to different providers externally from the company. So we are managing those relationships at a different level and that’s going to make a change for a lot of people in the organisation.

Vijai Karthigesu: Yeah and the other major change that cloud is going to bring to the organisation is discipline and cloud demands discipline. In the legacy world, the traditional world, we cannot get away with it. For example, I will give you some of the budgeting examples. We don’t do proper demand management, we don’t do capacity management, we don’t do CFDP, we don’t do demand forecasting, we only do things when it comes to a budget time or multi year budget or yearly budget, we cook up the numbers alright. They are not disciplined. But in a cloud when we start consuming cloud in an [optex] model, this has to be thorough and accurate. So cloud actually demands discipline in every layer and it is a big change. It is actually a paradigm shift.

Andy Jordan: Absolutely and that paradigm shift affects everybody in the organisation. It doesn’t matter what your job role and how it relates to technology, everybody’s role is going to change as a result of this. HR departments, training departments, they need to be prepared to help every employee in every role to deal with the shift to cloud.

Caitlin Nobes: By adapting to cloud computing organisations allow themselves to focus on what they do best, but it will require changes to structure and management. To learn about cloud and how it will affect individual roles, join us for Video 2.

To learn more, join Global Knowledge for its Free Webinar series starting June 18th, details below this video.

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